Toward a new journalism — or squirrels on skis?

We never thought Dateline Earth would stoop to hyping a squirrel-on-skis video, but it seems it’s come to that. Actually, there’s only a tiny snippet of that in this short film of man-on-the-street interviews with some light moments interspersed (including the aforementioned four-footed folderol). It kicked off a panel discussion entitled “Toward a New Journalism” at the just-concluded annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. (Warning: There are also several shots of Will Ferrell in here.)

(Due to circumstances beyond our control, we’re altering this post for the moment to provide this link to the video while we check on some copyright issues.)

That piece by Peter Dykstra and his clever companions at CNN illustrates the uncomfortable position that some in newspaper and broadcast journalism feel nowadays because of the upheaval being caused by the digital age. Circulation and viewership are down; younger people, especially, are getting their news from the internet.

Amy Gahran’s shirt
Photo/Amy Gahran

The basic message of the panelists was that this is an exciting new time for journalists, and that no matter what we do, our jobs are going to change quite a bit, if not radically, in the not-so-distant future. Those open to new ideas and innovation will make it; those who calcify will die, said Vikki Porter, director of the Knight Digital Media Center:

Journalists on the front lines are more eager than your editors and news organizations. . . Your news organizations are afraid. You’re seeing a lot of panic in your newsrooms, probably.

She said news organizations need to move beyond “shovelware” – just putting whatever’s in the paper on the web – and think bigger about depth the web can offer through video, audio, and more:

You can’t wait for your news organizations to catch up.

Of course, Porter runs a program that trains journalists to use these tools, so you’d expect her to say that. But that same theme was sounded by everyone on the panel, including digital journalism pioneer (and my friend) Amy Gahran:

We got used to the idea that news is something that has to be done by a large organization. It took a lot of capital to get those things done. I talk, you listen – that’s what news was for a long time. Those constraints don’t exist any more.

Nor should the big dogs just lie on the porch either, said David Ledford, editor of the News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware:

Investigative reporting lends itself to the internet really well. Old-fashioned gumshoe reporting is still important to everyone of us in this room.

OK readers, if you’ve gotten this far, you obviously care about the fate of journalism. And if you’re at Dateline Earth, you obviously care about enviro-news. So please help us out here: What imaginative uses of the web do you think Dateline Earth ought to consider for our heavy-duty enviro-news reporting? Please give us your ideas in the comments section. We’re blue-skying here, so nothing’s out of bounds.

One thing I can promise, though: No skiing squirrels.

(Oh, yeah, if you want to hear the whole panel, including incisive comments by Judy Woodruff of the University of Southern California, Paul Rogers of the San Jose Mercury News and Tom Murphy of redwoodage.com, I’ll link to the audio here when it’s available. I’m also in there raising questions during the Q-and-A on the proper role of advertising alongside news on the web.)